December 06, 2014

Orion launched today and recovery after two orbits. The test of the launch system, Pad Abort system, and Heat Shield were the main purposes of the flight.

I worked the proposal - after coming off the winning proposal for Hubble Robotic Service Mission. The Crew Exploration Vehicle was the original name of the flight vehicle. The Integrated Master Plan and Integrated Master Schedule described the increasing maturity of the deliverables for the space craft and it's flight support systems. After the contract win, I moved to the flight avionics firm and defined the IMP/IMS and project performance management processes for that major subcontractor. When you get to minute 21:17, Tracking Data Relay Satellite is mentioned. I worked that project as a new graduate student many decades ago.

Starting back on TDRSS, agile - meaning emerging requirements, test driven development, direct customer feedback on short iterations - and the development process were deployed with rolling waves, 44 day rule Work Packages, and emergent technical requirements derived from Mission Capabilities.

Here's the long version of the launch to orbit.

After two orbits, Orion came home. The double boom is the sonic boom. Tests of the heat shield will confirm if it functioned properly.

Recently a statement was made about agile and complexity and it was conjectured if the project is too complex for a physical board - a place to put the stickies for the stories - then we've missed opportunities to simplify. Possibly not realizing that complexity, as well as complex system, are the norm in many domains and complexity management processes using tools - rather than manual means - is also the norm.

When I suggested that agile and agile tools are used to deal with complex problem in these environments, without the need to reduce that complexity, there was a conversation of sorts that suggested...

I'd be surprised to hear Orion was using a COTS Agile project management tool in a significant way

Some Necessary Complexity

On Hubble mission, there is a Service Mission Assurance Process that reveals some of the complexity of the System of Systems found in space flight. The Interface Control processes for example for the payload on STS 125.

External knowledge of what tools were used, what processes were applied, how the flight avionics software for Orion was converted from the 777 suite to the spacecraft suite, tested, altered to user needs, simulated, emulated, verified and validated on rolling waves, on 44 day iteration cycles could have only been obtained if you were actually in the building in the vendors shop.

But there are other surprises in the business of space flight. A few good places to start include:

Beyond the outsiders comments of surprise inside space and defense firms, agile tools from Rally, VersionOne, and JIRA are used in a wide variety of domains from embedded systems to intelligence systems, where the requirements don't come from the users, they come from the enemy. Here's an example of agile in the INTEL business.

Maybe those surprised by the many different applications of the principles of agile - developed long before the Agile Manifesto - missed those processes in Building O6, Sepulveda Blvd, Redondo Beach, circa 1978.

In The End

There are numerous approaches to applying agile development in a wide variety of domains. I work in a domain where Systems Engineering and Earned Value Management is the starting point and Agile is used to develop code guided by EAI-748-C and DID 81861.

In these environments, development of software is incremental and iterative, with emerging requirements, with stable capabilities. These programs are complex and tools are the basis of success for managing all the moving parts of the program. Rarely is everyone in the same room, since these are System of Systems programs. As well Integration and Test are done by external sources - V&V for flight safety. So many of the processes found in small commercial projects are not applicable to programs in our domain.

To suggest there is but one way to reduce complexity by putting all the stories on cards on the wall is a bit naive in the absence of establishing the external needs of the project first, then deciding what processes to apply.